1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a consumable cartridge that can be removably fitted to an image forming apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus provided with a functional feature of supporting sales and popularization of proper consumable cartridges and also to a method of setting such an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image forming apparatus such as electrophotographic copying machines, electrophotographic printers, electrophotographic facsimile machines, electrophotographic composite machines, ink-jet printers and ink-jet composite machines are generally equipped with a cartridge that is filled with toner, ink or some other consumable material and can be removably fitted to the apparatus. As the toner or the ink contained therein is completely gone, the consumable cartridge is replaced by a new one to supply the consumable material to the image forming apparatus.
It is highly desirable that such a consumable cartridge is a proper one that contains right toner or ink supplied by the manufacturer of the image forming apparatus or at least conforms the related standards that are provided by the manufacturer. This is because the performance of toner or ink directly affects the image quality of the image formed on a recording medium and, if a proper consumable cartridge is not used, there can arise problems such as that neither the coloring characteristics of the toner nor the ink and the color balance of the formed image are right and appropriate. Another reason is that toner and ink influence the mechanical structures such as the photosensitive drum of the image forming apparatus. In other words, the cartridge loaded in the image forming apparatus and the printing engine of the image forming apparatus can become out of order when the cartridge is loaded with proper toner or ink.
However, recently, many third parties who are not the manufacturers and the authorized vendors of image forming apparatus have been and are manufacturing and selling consumable cartridges that can be fitted to image forming apparatus. The toner and the ink filled in the consumable cartridge manufactured and sold by third venders may not conform to the standards of the coloring characteristics and the like provided by the manufactures. Thus, if a user puts a consumable cartridge filled with ink whose coloring characteristics differ from the standards into the main body of an image forming apparatus, the colors of the output image may not necessarily agree with the colors of the image displayed on the display screen of the host computer. When the cartridge is filled with low quality toner or ink, the image forming apparatus main body may fail at worst.
Therefore, there have been proposals for detecting improper consumable cartridges and outputting a predetermined warning or prohibiting any image forming operation when the use of an improper consumable cartridge is detected. For example, Patent Document 1 (JP 2001-105625-A) describes an ink cartridge monitoring system adapted to issue a warning when an ink cartridge that is not of the specified type is loaded in a printer. According to the above cited patent document, each ink cartridge to be loaded in a printer is made to contain an IC chip storing information on the cartridge recorded therein while the connector that is the interface with an IC chip, the EEPROM and the main control section of the printer are adapted to read the contained information. The host computer requests the printer for status information and, when an ink replacing flag is set in the response from the printer, it then requests the printer for the cartridge information. If the cartridge information provided in response does not indicate that the cartridge is a proper one, it transmits a warning message.
Patent Document 2 (JP 2005-326731-A) describes an image forming processing apparatus adapted to display a message notifying that the loaded toner cartridge is not a proper one on the UI apparatus when it is actually not a proper one and contains wrong toner and also an image prompting the user to make sure that the guarantee label guaranteeing the image quality is a wrong one in any operation mode other than the operation mode corresponding to a proper cartridge. Subsequently, the user is requested to display the guidance screen such as the selection screen of the proper operation mode on the UI apparatus.